Category: Apple

On the Apple PiPP!N

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With the Wii U’s release this weekend, I thought it would be fun to look at Apple’s foray in to the gaming console market. Long before the iPod touch was the “funnest iPod ever,” Apple tested the waters with the PiPP!N project.

(For sanity’s sake, I’ll be using the far-easier-to-read “Pippin” nomenclature.)

History

In 1994, Bandai, a Japanese game maker approached Apple about partnering on a scaled-down Mac for CD-ROM based gaming. The company asked for a stripped-down Classic II, with the ability to play Macromedia Director-based games. Bandai suggested that Apple build the internals, and that they would handle the casing, controls and packaging.

Bandai’s previous game console, the Playdia was on the market already, but failing. The company looked to Apple to supply its hardware expertise to make something more powerful and ultimately more fun.

Less than a year after the initial meeting, a prototype was shown off in Monterey, California to some thirty or so companies writing CD-ROM games at the time. The 68K-based machine was somewhat underwhelming, as as Apple was already working on the PowerPC project at the time, the two companies changed gears and re-worked the machine. (Unsurprisingly, moving to the newer silicon to power the console cut profits severely.)

When it was released in 1995, the Apple Bandai Pippin was up against stiff competition in the forms of the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation. At $599, less than 45,000 were sold, with production being halted in 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. Roughly 100,000 units were built, but Bandai continued to support until December 31, 2002.

Hardware

Here were the box’s specs, according to Apple’s support document:

  • 66MHz PowerPC 603 RISC Microprocessor
  • Superscalar, 3 instructions per clock cycle
  • 8 kByte data and 8 kByte instruction caches
  • IEEE standard Single & Double Precision Floating Point Unit
  • 6 MB combined System & Video Memory, advanced architecture
  • 4X CDROM drive
  • 64 kbyte SRAM Store/Restore Backup
  • Aftermarket easy memory expansion cards 2, 4 and 8 MB increments

Video-wise, the machine included:

  • 8 bit and 16 bit video support
  • Dual Frame Buffers for superior frame to frame animation
  • Support for NTSC & PAL composite, S-Video and VGA (640×480) monitors
  • Up to 16.7M colors

Apple boasted that the Pippin was GeoPort ready.

Ladies…

The Pippin’s controller featured a trackball, 4-way pad and a collection of buttons:

In addition to the wired controller, Apple built a wireless version that used IR to communicate to the console, as well as these accessories:

  • Pippin keyboard with drawing tablet
  • Pippin Modems (14.4, 28.8, 33.6 kbit/s)
  • Pippin memory (2, 4, 8, 16 MB)
  • Pippin Floppy Dock
  • Pippin MO 256 MB optical disk

Apple also built adaptors to connect the Pippin to a Macintosh via ADB.

Software

The base of the “PippinOS” was stripped-down version of System 7.5.2. As the machine was not a Macintosh, Apple developers had to modify the software fairly heavily. Here’s a bit from the Pippin’s Wikipedia page:

On a typical PowerPC-based Macintosh system, the boot process includes loading a bootstrap loader from ROM, loading the Process Manager stored in the boot blocks of the startup device, locating a “blessed” System Folder on the startup device, and then loading Finder. However, because the Pippin platform ran only on non-writable CD-ROM, a modification to the boot process had to be made. For developers who were using standard 7.5.2 system software, a “PippinFinder” was installed into the System Folder, allowing the CD-ROM to be bootable on a Pippin-based system. Once development was finalized, PippinFinder was removed from the System Folder, and the Pippin-specific system software was placed onto the build. In addition, an alias of the main executable was placed into the Startup Items folder, so that upon bootup, the application will launch automatically.

Good times, right?

The news on the non-OS software front wasn’t much better.

The vast majority of titles were built by Bandai. Less than 80 titles were released, with just 18 available at launch in the US. You can download some examples even today.

To build a game, developers had to “Pippinize” their CD-ROM discs, a process that included using a test Pippin system, the Mac software “Toast Pro” and a Power Macintosh.

RSA’s public/private key system was used to sign the CDs, and non-signed discs would not boot the Pippin. That said, Macs and PCs could read the contents of a Pippinized CD-ROM without issue.

Wrap-up

The Pippin is maybe the finest example of the bonkers projects Apple was trying the mid 1990s. Instead of focusing on its core product, Apple let the Macintosh grow stale and bloated while putting untold hours and money behind things like the Pippin and other dead-end technology.

Today, of course, Apple is a very different company. While it’s hard to tell if Apple knew how successful gaming on iOS would become, it has worked to take advantage of it.

New iMacs Delayed? ⇢

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Rumor has it that Apple is having issues building the new crazy-thin-except-in-the-middle iMacs, and may not ship the machines until early next year. As someone who needs to order several iMacs for work, this has me nervous.

The Choice ⇢

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Abdel Ibrahim:

In the end, you have to make a choice between what you want a tablet for. Is it to just browse the web and check your email? If so, the Nexus 7 is a great device for that. But if you’d like to do those things as well as play a game here and there, read a book, and do a whole bunch more due to the availability of of nearly 300,000 apps, then the mini is the clear winner. It’s not that these other tablets are bad – it’s just that the iPad mini is so good.

‘Siri Isn’t A Sexy Librarian’ ⇢

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Kontra:

Obviously, no new platform as far-reaching as Siri comes without issues and risks. It also doesn’t help that the two commercial online successes Apple has had, iTunes and App Store, were done in another era of technology and still contain vestiges of many operational shortcomings. More recent efforts such as MobileMe, Ping, Game Center, iCloud, iTunes Match, Passbook, etc., have been less than stellar. Regardless, Siri stands as a monumental opportunity both for Apple as a transactional money machine and for its users as a new paradigm of discovery and task completion more approachable than any we’ve seen to date. In the end, Siri is Apple’s game to lose.

iPad mini Review: Good Things Come in Small Packages

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It’s become a familiar cycle, these things. First, we see a single rumor, then photos of camera cables leak from China, then a Best Buy employee sends a screenshot to 9to5Mac with price points. Back housings and screens pop up, and before we know it, someone’s assembled a product that hasn’t been announced.

Then, Apple gets on stage, announcing the very thing we all know is coming, leaving some people underwhelmed and disappointed at the lack of anything surprising.

The iPad mini came in to the world last month under these circumstances. While it was less documented than the last several iPhones, Apple nerds pretty much knew what to expect from Phil Schiller’s time on stage in San Jose.

I — like a lot of nerds — ordered an iPad mini on day one. I’ve been using it consistently since, and these are my impressions.

Hardware

Above: An iPhone 5, Kindle Paperwhite, iPad mini, Moleskine notebook and iPad 3

The iPad mini takes Apple’s category-leading tablet and makes it just a tad bit smaller, but a lot lighter. This weight decrease is one thing I’ve really come to enjoy using the mini, especially in bed or on the couch.

The iPad mini is also thinner than its bigger cousin, but the difference doesn’t make a big impact, day to day, like the weight does.

Like all iOS devices, the iPad mini experience is all about the screen. Like the larger iPad 2, the mini sports a 1024×768 display, but unlike the iPad 2, it does so with a 7.9-inch panel.

This puts the iPad mini at 163 pixels per inch, right in between the iPad 2 at 132 ppi and the iPad 4 at 264 ppi.

When I unboxed the iPad mini, the screen turned me off right away. It’s less clear than the Retina iPad, and the pixels aren’t as close to the glass.

However, I — like most other reviewers — have already grown accustomed to this step backwards in quality. Yes, it’s not as good as the Retina display, but it’s also totally usable. I haven’t had to adjust the text size in any apps, and it doesn’t generate any eye strain, either.

For Apple to include a Retina display in the iPad mini, the company will have to get the price down, and be able to support it in a chassis this thin, with a battery this small. While I’ll be stoked to see it, I don’t think we’ll get a Retina mini any time soon.

The screen’s colors and viewing angles are just great. The thin bezel on the sides is weird to get used to at first, but iOS 6 does a good job at ignoring a “resting” thumb. I think I’ve already adjusted.

The rest of the iPad’s construction is stellar. My model is of the “Black and Slate” variety and resembles an iPod touch in iPhone 5 skin. The full-sized iPad really does seem like its due for an overhaul sometime soon.

The buttons on the iPad mini are metal, not plastic like on the larger tablet. While the feel is much-improved, I miss the volume rocker. It was much easier to use without much thought.

The stereo (!!) speakers flanking the Lightning connector are the best I’ve heard on an iOS device. Of course, that’s not saying much.

Performance wise, the iPad mini is no slouch. As it has the same internals as the iPad 2, and same CPU as the iPad 3 (but not the “quad-core” graphics), I don’t have any concerns about this thing slipping in to obsolescence as quickly as the first iPad did.

The only time I notice the iPad mini’s 512 MB of RAM is in Mobile Safari. It loves to dump tabs quickly. I really wish Apple would work on that, as it’s annoying to have to re-load a page after leaving it for just a few moments.

Software

Even though all of the iPad apps in the iOS App Store work on the mini out of the box, iOS can be weird at this resolution. I haven’t come across anything that’s unusable, but the smaller touch targets do take some getting used to. I’d like to see Apple address this in an update to iOS, but I can see that the company doesn’t want to fragment the OS anymore than it already has.

I was initially concerned about typing on the iPad mini. Turns out, this really hasn’t been an issue for me. I have larger hands than some, but I can type easily in portrait mode with my thumbs, since it’s just like typing on the iPhone 5 in landscape.

While I can thumb-type on the iPad mini in landscape, it’s not super comfortable. I can hunt and peck pretty quickly, though. Like before, I’ll be pairing this thing with an Apple Bluetooth keyboard when I need to get some serious words down.

In Conclusion…

The iPad mini doesn’t add anything to the iOS experience feature-wise, but it does make using iPad apps out in the real world far more likely. I never felt comfortable using my iPad outside the office or house, but I think I’ll be taking this smaller, lighter iPad with me more often.

That said, I’m returning mine and upgrading to an LTE model. The size makes the iPad mini feel much more like a digital notebook than the regular iPad ever could. I see myself carrying it with me far more often than I did with any previous iPad.

Lots of people have compared this iPad to the iPod mini, which was famous for being a huge seller for Apple thanks to its smaller frame, despite it’s decreased storage space. With the iPad mini, Apple has come up with something that’s as full-featured as the larger product, in a smaller package for less money. It’s a win all the way around. I won’t be going back to the larger iPad.